Finishing a Day's Work in Advance 19 Tackle the Time-Wasters Take a look at the results of the following survey, conducted by Pace Productivity, Inc., of Toronto, Canada. Pace surveyed more than 600 employees and entrepreneurs in North America to find out what they considered to be the top time-wasters in terms of their productivity. These were the top 15 responses to the question of what things outside the respondents' control got in the way of productivity. We feel certain that you'll recognize them yourself: Time-Waster Paperwork/administrative tasks Customer requests Phone calls/phone interruptions Computer/system/equipment problems No internal support/other department inefficiencies Unspecified interruptions Traffic/travel Meetings--too many/too long/unnecessary Volume of work/not enough time Staffing issues/people absent Requests from peers/other departments Changing priorities/unplanned projects Fire fighting/emergencies Doing other people's jobs Handling customers without appointments # of Responses 135 115 101 86 58 45 43 38 38 36 31 29 27 26 23